‘Conservatives were shocked’: Democrats held ground in Sacramento-area school board elections

Energized by activism against COVID-19 education mandates, conservative parents all over California put their names on the ballot this fall aiming to claim seats on local school boards. Some saw the makings of a GOP wave in a blue state, and the Republican Party recruited and trained candidates.

It didn’t work.

The so-called parent revolt didn’t materialize as conservatives hoped in Sacramento County school board races or in neighboring communities.

Instead, Democrats won elections in Democratic neighborhoods and moderate Republicans with traditional resumes tended to have more success than candidates from the far right, leaving local school boards with roughly the same political dynamic that characterized their decision-making prior to the pandemic.

“The school boards may have seemed like a soft target, but they’re some of the most contested races,” said Micah Grant, a Republican who was elected to the Natomas Unified school board in 2016. “Conservatives were shocked.”

That trend played out in the Folsom Cordova Unified School District, where union-supported former educator Kara Lofthouse defeated Jen Tarbox, a right-leaning parent and social media marketer who became active at school board meetings during the pandemic.

In the Natomas Unified School District, two candidates who stressed “parents rights” in their campaigns and had backing from conservatives lost to candidates backed by the local chapter of the California Teachers Association.

And in San Juan Unified, Republicans with long records of community service in local organizations pulled ahead while a candidate who identified himself as a member of the far-right group Proud Boys fell far behind.

Republicans fared better in Placer County, where conservatives won across the right-leaning community. For the 31 open school board seats that the GOP was watching, 28 GOP-backed candidates were poised to win in the latest election results.

In some ways, the results are a mirror image to the midterm national outcome in the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. Democrats beat expectations and far-right Republicans tended to lose contested seats in high-profile races.

“I thought there would be more turnover in the state and country,” said GOP political consultant and former Yolo County Supervisor Matt Rexroad, “because families were upset (about COVID policies).”

Sacramento County Democrats took heart in holding their ground, particularly after the divisiveness that characterized school board meetings during the pandemic. In those years, some parents pushed local officials to disregard state public health mandates in the interest of bringing students back to class while others pressed leaders to be as cautious as possible in reopening schools.

That discord was one reason Lofthouse of Folsom Cordova said she wanted to remain as politically neutral as possible during her campaign.

“We are so polarized now, and these elections extend those polarizations,” she said.

The Proud Boy on the ballot

The most extreme example in the Sacramento region of a far-right candidate seeing an opportunity on a school board took place in San Juan Unified, where Jeffrey Perrine ran for office.

A self-identified member of the Proud Boys group, Perrine had already been expelled from the Sacramento County Republican Central Committee over his political views by the time he began running for elected office this year.

He lost his bid for an Assembly seat in California’s June primary, and then turned his attention to San Juan Unified. He told The Sacramento Bee he was running to bring conservative values to the board and “fight cultural Marxism.”

Perrine was confident that he’d have a decent shot.

“I figured I could utilize the name recognition” from his Assembly campaign, Perrine said, “and the same people will vote for me.”

Instead, Democrats and Republicans alike called attention to his campaign for a seat representing Orangevale on the suburban school board.

He’s now behind both Republican-backed Tanya Kravchuk, a business owner and former nonprofit director, and Michael McKibbin, the union-supported incumbent.

Grant, the Natomas trustee, supported Kravchuk and has previously distanced the local Republican Party from Perrine. He said school board campaigns need to appeal to local issues — not larger political fights.

“A lot of the messaging points have this national tilt that doesn’t really apply locally,” he said. “I think it really misses the mark. Parents just want to know that kids have educational paths, and schools are safe and secure, and that elected board members are responsive.”

Underscoring Grant’s point, the biggest change in a local school board could come in the Sacramento City Unified School District. The election followed this year’s teacher strike, which upended parents’ schedules and shut down schools for eight days.

In the latest election results, two underdogs supported by the Sacramento City Teachers Association are in position to defeat incumbents and a third union-backed newcomer is ahead in an open race.

‘Parents rights’ candidates in Natomas

Grant did not make an endorsement in the two seats that were up for grabs on the Natomas school board.

In those races, conservative moms Monique Hokman and Megan Allen signaled their skepticism of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s handling of COVID-19 in schools by declaring their support for “parents rights.” Lance Christensen, the Republican who ran a long-shot campaign for state superintendent, endorsed them and stressed similar points in his race.

As The Bee previously reported, Hokman had aired anti-vaccine misinformation at public school board meetings. Both Hokman and Allen had criticized curriculum meant to be more inclusive of LGBT people; the candidates were denounced by local LGBT advocates.

They lost to union-supported education advocate Cindy Quiralte and Sacramento State community partnership coordinator Noel Mora, both of whom are Democrats.

Quiralte and Mora both said in interviews that the conservative message simply did not resonate with Natomas residents.

Voters “wanted to make sure their children had leadership that recognized that they needed to provide safety and support to those students, particularly LGBTQ students,” Quiralte said.

In her extensive door-knocking campaign throughout Area 4 — neighborhoods north of Del Paso Road and east of Interstate 5 — Quiralte’s conversations indicated that “there were a lot of concerns (about) ensuring that there was leadership that was going to be supportive of LGBTQ students.”

Quiralte said she told voters that “these students deserve leadership that’s going to celebrate them, champion them, and also keep them safe; that bullying is not OK, and that family structures are not monolith. And I was comfortable saying that.”

What COVID-19 meant to mainstream candidates

Several victorious Sacramento County school board candidates said the coronavirus pandemic helped motivate them to run for office, but not necessarily as a “revolt” against state mandates.

Lofthouse, the former teacher who won a seat on the Folsom Cordova board, grew frustrated during the pandemic seeing politics at play out in the district, dividing the school board and district on issues like how to address social emotional learning.

She came to believe that some candidates across the region may have had misguided ideas of what they could do if they won office.

“There is definitely a huge value placed on my experience, as it should be,” she said.

Some conservatives who became strong voices during the pandemic calling for schools to reopen had more success.

Ben Avey, a right-leaning parent who left the Republican Party during the Trump administration, became active during the pandemic, creating the advocacy group San Juan Parents Association in response to the school closures. He won his seat in San Juan Unified, securing more than two-thirds of the votes for Area 6 to represent Fair Oaks on the board.

“It’s heartening to know that people still unite to put kids first in education,” Avey said. “I’m grateful to my neighbors for the trust they have placed in me to be a voice for parents on the school board. Now it’s time to get to work.”

Conservatives win in Placer

In Placer County, where many parents were fed up with the state’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, school boards may lean even further right voting on future school policies.

Parents endorsed by local GOP organizations and the American Council, a political action committee that members of Rocklin’s Destiny Church started in 2020, are on track to win their races.

In Rocklin Unified School District, where voters chose three candidates of six, Tiffany Saathoff holds a strong lead. Saathoff ran for reelection after two years on the board where she made headlines for ignoring mask mandates and, her critics said, blurred the line separating church and state. Saathoff, a pastor at Destiny, received $2,200 in donations from the American Council.

Other American Council and GOP-supported candidates Dereck Counter and Kari Hamilton were trailing as of Nov. 22, but Placer County is still making its way through more than 50,000 ballots, and the margins are small.

Nearby in Roseville, a handful of first-time parent candidates are pulling ahead. The founder of Reopen California Schools, Jonathan Zachreson, is leading is likely to win a seat on Roseville City School Board.

“The biggest change I hope to see is more school board members willing to fight for local control and willing to stand up to the state.” Zachreson said. “They need to think critically about the policies put in front of them.”

Zachreson said school vaccine mandates and curriculum are still on many parents’ minds.

In the election for Dry Creek School Board, conservative candidates Jon Fenske, Jason Walker and Jean Pagnone are leading and likely to win their seats.

The day after the election, Fenske was optimistic about the results both in Roseville and in neighboring towns in the county. He said several candidates with what he called “pro-parent” views met to discuss how they’ll approach their new positions.

Now that pandemic politics have taken a backseat, the Christian conservative elected members of Placer County school boards say they are going to focus on social issues in the classroom, such as limiting topics relating to ethnic studies and gender and sexuality.

“We would all like to work together,” Fenske said.

This story was originally published November 27, 2022 at 5:00 AM.